CBSO/Nelsons at Symphony Hall, Birmingham

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Birmingham has scarcely been without memorable Mahler experiences in the past couple of decades. Yet this Second Symphony was in a class of its own, surpassing almost every performance of the work in my own living memory.

And it wasn’t even my main reason for travelling to Birmingham: that was to catch the UK premiere of Jorg Widmann’s Antiphon. Widmann’s star is very much in the ascendant at the moment, with his special Wigmore Hall series and a forthcoming Proms premiere. Antiphon — with its “choirs” of instruments, hurling ideas at each other and ricocheting them back — had several